Replication over wireless bridge

[ECTF]

I would like to replicate my virtual servers running on 2 x vmware esxi 5.1 hosts to an offsite location which is connected via a 54mbps wireless bridge. The idea is that my offsite location is actually my DR site with a dedicated ESXi 5.1 host. 6 critical virtual servers would be replicated to this dr site on a scheduled basis. The building are 100metres apart and the wireless bridge would be used purely for the replication.

Is this possible ? Has anyone ever replicated over wifi before ?

[ZachW]

It's definitely possible as "a connection is a connection is a connection".. And I have worked with a few users who have been utilizing a wireless link. That being said in almost all of those cases their link didn't have the best integrity and we were continuously getting network drops which after so many times will cause the replication to fail out and of course that is not preferred . So I guess my question would be do you feel as though the link is reliable enough to support an open datastream between the source and target site for an extended period of time? If you are unsure you can of course test this out or utilize a third-party monitoring tool to take a closer look at this.

[ECTF]

Thank you for your reply. We would link the buildings over normal copper but the civil works cost is astronomical and we dont have adequate broadband coverage to allow for VPN. Wireless is the only way to link the buildings and we are planning on using dedicated Cisco WIFI equipment with YAGI Antenna's so it's not budget kit.

[vcenterlad]

I wouldn't bother with YAGI, I would look at point to point wireless back haul/MIMO equipment if there is no budget. Search for airaya.[com] or netkrom.[com.] These technologies are not really prone to packet drop, no more so than normal VPN/ethernet/copper/xDSL networks and you can achieve >200mbps on a 300mbps link.

Please note, I have not replicated over wireless before, But I have had DFS/Backup to disk/normal network operations running over a backhaul before, with no adverse conditions encountered.

[Yuki]

We've done this in the past with 2 directional antenaes and bridges. 100 meters is not that much, you should be able to get a good signal going if there is no interference around. We have one site right now using Hawking HOWABN1 outside bridges to link two buildings

[DavidrBrace]

You could look at getting a microwave link for the two buildings (assuming you have half decent line of site).
We run quite a number of microwave links for several customers and a number put all their phones, internet and backups over the link back to our data center.

[Yuki]

just be cautious about using them in areas that see a lot of fog/smog, trees and other line of sight issues.

[johndoe123123]

If you can watch youtube over the wireless link, it will work fine.

Of course you can have intereference, but 100 meters? You can handle that with the right equipment. Can't be any worse than your typical trashed internet vpn link.

Don't worry about the fact it is wireless.

Go buy 2 Ubiqiti Nanobridge M units. They are cheap. It'll work fine, and keep interference to a minimum.

The key is line of site, but 100 meters you can just barrel through regardless .

If you have serious coin, there's free-air optics out there, but you don't need this.

[m.novelli]

I have a customer replicating over a 20 Mbit wifi link, it works fine
Veeam 6.5 added code to check and bypass problems with unreliable links

Marco

[vcenterlad]

Hi.
Just wondering whether you have had any progress/luck with any solutions that you have implemented?